Armenian massacre of 1915

                                                                                                                   Jamaal Bass

                                                                                                                  Sociology 361

                                                                                                                   3/414

Genocide and ethnic cleansing occurs for many different reasons. In chapter 1 the history of the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians is discussed. Armenians were completely removed from Anatolian society and all ties were severed. This was mainly because they weren’t under Muslim faith. Those who were not Muslim were looked down upon and weren’t seen as equals. Armenians struggled with being treated equally and being protected under the law. Without protection and support, they were often murdered, had their churches burned down, and stripped of their Christian identity before murder.

The rise of the young Turks sparked hope for the Armenians only to be their demise in the end. It was never the intention of the Turks to grant Armenians autonomy and the same equal freedoms as the Turks. When they rose to power they quickly removed the Armenians. They were given a few days to sell their goods and prepare for deportation where many died. They were traveled through unbearable conditions and they weren’t given what was needed to survive. They starved, and fell to fatigue to the point where they were no more than mere animals. This form of dehumanization was similar to the process Jews went through in ghettos under Nazi control.

Hitler saw Germans as a superior race and Jews as an infestation. This led to the genocide of the Jewish people. It didn’t begin as genocide, but Hitler’s main goal was to remove any Jewish influence from Germany. He taught Germans to believe they Jewish people brought diseases, and were seductive. Their only goal was to dirty the blood of pure Germans. This was a form of dehumanization that helped many Germans to think that they truly were superior, and that the Jewish people truly had evil motives. They wanted to force them onto other countries, and when they fought the Soviet Union they were as equal enemies as the Russians. They were often brutally murdered and tortured until moved into ghettos which were the final form of dehumanization before genocide. Living in terrible living conditions on top of one another like rats in a cage, Hitler used this justification for finally attempting to murder them all.

Like the Turks and the Nazis, the Russians also participated in ethnic cleansing and deportation. The Soviets forced them from their homelands where thousands died during the travel. Although it wasn’t their intention to murder them in a genocidal attack, they set policies to brain wash the Chechens-Ingush into forgetting about their homes which made them usable material. Stalin felt that the Tatars were too attached to their hometowns and wouldn’t effectively mold into the Soviet Union which would in turn make them unusable in the work force. Stalin saw entire ethnic groups as “human material” and unlike the Nazi’s when they were deported they had nowhere to go.